They're Paranoid, We're Blasé

By

Melik Kaylan

Updated Jan. 28, 2005 12:01 a.m. ET

Someone should compile a multivolume History of Ignorance -- and deliver it via laser-guided UPS through the windows of radical madrassas and their news-media outlets in the Middle East. The compilation would feature a study of Cro-Magnon-era attempts to make sense of natural catastrophes, continuing through a perusal of Cargo Cults and millennial sects and the like, ending with an admonition that little has changed in our day. As evidence of the latter, the study could cite the astounding post-tsunami conspiracy theories being...